Stephen Arnold/Megatrax Mashup

[newsn8te 189]

I was listening to some themes on NMSA. I cam across Firstcom's production track ""Maximum Effort and Efficiency" and it sound identical to the morning cut of Stephen Arnold's Uphonix. Are or were these 2 companies ever related and does any one know if there are any other tracks like this?

 

Maximum Effort and Efficiency:

http://www.southernmedia-nmsa.com/#3,1,983

 

Morning Open of Uphonix:

http://www.newsmusicnow.com/player.php?id=2957

[DonDonP1 113]

I was listening to some themes on NMSA. I cam across Megatrax's production track ""Maximum Effort and Efficiency" and it sound identical to the morning cut of Stephen Arnold's Uphonix. Are or were these 2 companies ever related and does any one know if there are any other tracks like this?

 

Maximum Effort and Efficiency:

http://www.southernmedia-nmsa.com/#3,1,983

 

Morning Open of Uphonix:

http://www.newsmusicnow.com/player.php?id=2957

 

Beats me. (In other words: I do not know.)

[ColDayNews 437]

Stephen Arnold took a bunch of unused and retired packages to create U-phonix. In fact, the signature within U-phonix is from the old Sinclair package from when they first began standardization in the mid-2000s.

[Ntropolis 593]

That production track in question is actually from FirstCom.

 

Stephen Arnold took a bunch of unused and retired packages to create U-phonix. In fact, the signature within U-phonix is from the old Sinclair package from when they first began standardization in the mid-2000s.

 

I think it was the other way around - when the Sinclair package was retired, select themes became part of Uphonix.

[qunewsguy 376]

Production libraries have been known to knock off other companies before. I've seen tracks pulled once the original creator complains. That said, the FirstCom track is much older. It's possible the composer on that did a bit of work for Stephen Arnold too.

[TSSZNews 1046]

I was listening to some themes on NMSA. I cam across Firstcom's production track ""Maximum Effort and Efficiency" and it sound identical to the morning cut of Stephen Arnold's Uphonix. Are or were these 2 companies ever related and does any one know if there are any other tracks like this?

 

Maximum Effort and Efficiency:

http://www.southernmedia-nmsa.com/#3,1,983

 

Morning Open of Uphonix:

http://www.newsmusicnow.com/player.php?id=2957

 

I'm a little surprised that AM open survived in Uphonix, considering Arnold re-orchestrated the main themes to get rid of the rhythm that made them also sound too close for comfort.

[ChesapeakeTV 310]

Ah ha, I was wondering if anyone would ever notice that!

 

Arnold has a history of (apparently) buying cues from freelancers and integrating them into his packages. There is a theme - "East to West" - in the Lifestyles I library from Toby Arnold that turns up in Global Village as well.

 

Also, speaking in the know, the AM theme was indeed completely unaltered in the redo - that's not an NMN error or anything. There are five main themes now, as seen in these videos:

 

- the primary theme everyone knows

- same as News A but different vamp

- the other primary theme everyone knows, which incidentally AFAICT started life as a promo bed in the original

- the ex-Sinclair theme, one of 4 recycled into U-Phonix

- the unchanged one

[dpb 35]

The track "Maximum Effort and Efficiency" is by composer Bud Guin for FirstCom. He also works with Stephen Arnold. He is credited as a co-composer for a bunch of tracks on The Vault, especially on the album "The Sound of the Story". Some of those tracks came from the 2001 CNN Headline News package, so I imagine they collaborated on that package as well. 

 

If you listen to Guin's other news theme-related work for FirstCom, it sounds Arnold-esque. Listen to the sample, for example, of K2 News on SouthernMedia.